Motion Planning with Fixed-Wing UAVs

Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer significant performance advantages over rotary-wing UAVs in terms of speed, endurance, and efficiency. However, these vehicles have traditionally been severely limited when it comes to maneuverability. By leveraging full-state direct trajectory optimization with a nonlinear aircraft model, researchers at Johns Hopkins APL are able to perform aggressive maneuvers with high angles-of-attack, even ones planned in realtime. This approach enables high-speed navigation of complex environments by vehicles with large state spaces, nonlinear dynamics, and actuator constraints, all while operating on-the-fly.

More info on this technology: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.11478

Learn about the Intelligent Systems Center at Johns Hopkins APL: https://www.jhuapl.edu/isc

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